


Spirit Slips Away

by Lazulia



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Alien Biology, Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Depiction of illness, Guardians 2 compliant, Kraglin tries so hard to comfort, M/M, Sick Yondu, Suicidal Thoughts, Terminal Illness, Vomit, attempted hurt/comfort, it’s the behind the scenes of canon so it counts, smut in later chapters, vague medical stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2020-09-23 19:38:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20345596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazulia/pseuds/Lazulia
Summary: Death was no stranger to Ravagers. But the prospect of death coming at the end of a lengthy, gruesome illness was something Yondu never thought he'd have to face.An alternate view of the events of Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, in which Yondu receives bad news on Contraxia and things get worse from there.





	1. When the darkness starts to fall

**Author's Note:**

> Did anyone order Yondu angst? I couldn't stop thinking about Yondu's general state of mind during the majority of Guardians 2. I know James Gunn mentioned he was depressed about life in general, but I decided to add a little extra plot between scenes. It's canon compliant, so obviously we know how this is going to end. Let's just enjoy the ride. 
> 
> Title is from Spirit Slips Away by Thin Lizzy. Great band, highly recommend. I've had the title planned before I remembered the deleted scene from Guardians 2, in which Kraglin mentions there's some Thin Lizzy on the Zune, so hey. If this song shows up in Guardians 3, James Gunn owes me a pizza. I'M WATCHING YOU JAMES.
> 
> **CW for brief thoughts of suicide towards the end of the chapter**

What happened on Contraxia stayed on Contraxia.

In theory. 

Contraxia was a spinning ball of excess drenched in anonymous neon light, designed to look the other way. A body could drink, fuck, gamble and fight their way through to the equator, and Contraxia would gladly forget they were ever here. 

Rooms and fighting rings received a cozy blast of radiation to kill any DNA left behind. There were no cameras, no requests for ID. Cash units only. The courtesan bots wiped their memory banks between clients, and so did the medibots.

Yondu was used to hanging out with the former. Sitting shirtless in a room with the latter, welp. That was a new one. He could have gotten a courtesan to poke and prod him this roughly for a fraction of the price, but then he wouldn’t have had the distinct joy of waiting for the creaky medibot to run its diagnostic. 

Creepy thing. Its expression had been pre-programmed into a reasonable facsimile of sympathy, green synthaskin stretched taut around rounded, slack features. The illusion of good bedside manner was a bit marred by the way the synthaskin just sort of peeled away at the wrists, medical instruments standing in for fingers. 

They had a doc on the Eclector, usually. There were times when the doc was nothing more than a tailor who had a strong enough stomach to stitch flesh as well as fabric. The one they had now knew their stuff. Could even handle Yondu’s belligerent ass whenever he ended up in med bay with bones sticking out from where they shouldn’t, so there wasn’t much to complain about there. 

But a ship’s doc would ask uncomfortable questions and give him looks and if any of them devolved into looks of pity or kindness, then Yondu couldn’t be held responsible for what his arrow decided to do. 

Contraxia’s medibots were handy if you wanted to patch up a wound you couldn’t explain or didn’t want to attract Nova Corps attention, or get someone to fix your junk when you’ve been shooting green for two weeks. Yondu had gone to see them once before, to get a piece of blade extracted from his ribs. Couldn’t risk the ship’s doc or anyone else tracing it back to its source, and six thousand credits later, he walked back on the Eclector with a fresh set of stitches while the medibots forgot he was ever there. 

This latest bit of trouble was starting to hurt worse than the blade had. 

A little pain was nothing, given Yondu’s age. Joints ached most of the time and old wounds lit up brightly on a bad day. A lot of pain was troublesome, but par for the course when dinner rations sometimes looked a little sketchy or the ship’s air filtration system wasn’t the best, depending on who was screwing in the vents in a given week. 

Pain so bad it made him want to claw his belly open, puking that had nothing to do with the green fuzz on top of yesterday’s dinner, not to mention the constant fog of exhaustion that threatened to leave him sleeping at his post? After a couple weeks of that, maybe it was time to get his guts looked at. 

Hiding an ailment once from the crew was easy. Hiding it again and again was a feat and Yondu could only get away once with claiming he was hungover when crew caught him throwing up all over the hallway outside the bridge, bent double from the effort it took to straighten his spine through the burning agony in his guts. Being hungover on its own was enough of a show of weakness.

Plus, Kraglin may be dumb, but he wasn’t stupid. That was the problem with a first mate who was also one’s bedmate. 

He was starting to catch on. He’d woken up to Yondu sweating and panting over a flare of pain under his ribs and Yondu had been too damn dizzy to think of a sensible lie. 

He’d started kicking Kraglin out of bed once they were done rumpling the sheets, but that didn’t stop the idiot’s damn concern. 

_Next time we’re on Contraxia, boss? You’ll stop at the clinic? Please?_ Yondu almost heard the unspoken _For me?_ and he’d relented. Not with words, and certainly not to Kraglin, but he did make a point of bumping Contraxia up on the list of planets to stop by next time they had time to kill between jobs. 

It had nothing to do with guilt about Kraglin’s big watery blue eyes. Love had no place in their bedroom, spoken or otherwise, but sometimes he wondered about Kraglin. He was an excellent first mate and a damn decent bed partner because if nothing else, Yondu could trust a man who wore his heart on his sleeve like Kraglin did. 

He’d feel guilty about never returning the favor, if Yondu Udonta had a use for guilt.

But now it was a question of practicality. Whatever words may or may not exist on his tongue, he wasn’t going to make Kraglin stroll into his quarters and find his bloated corpse once his guts finally decided to explode. Wouldn’t be right to do that to a man like him. 

That was how Yondu ended up sitting on a greasy examination table, staring blankly at a 3-D holographic projection of the guts in question. His eyes felt gritty as he followed the medibot’s hand (well, tool) pointing out a mass, colored purple for his convenience. Yondu was only just starting to realize it wasn’t supposed to be there. There was a lot of purple on display, twining between and around the green outlines of what Yondu assumed were organs meant to be there. 

He caught important-sounding words like _liver_ and _stomach_ and _metastasis_ and _spreading quickly_ and when the medibot flipped the projection around, its voice patronizingly kind as it said something about _kidneys_ and pointed to a whole lot of purple, Yondu stopped listening. He waited until the medibot’s programming paused, waiting for input from its patient before proceeding. Maybe it was asking a question. Yondu didn’t give two shits. 

“So, how do you fix me? Cut that… stuff outta me?” He could deal with that. Find a quiet place to park the ship for a few days while he waited for stitches to heal. Make up some bullshit about getting shot in the gut, something the crew would accept as proper instead of thinking their captain had a _medical_ thing. 

The medibot cocked its head at a precise 27-degree angle to convey compassion. Its blank eyes didn’t really do much though. “Surgery is not an option at this stage. You can purchase medication to manage the symptoms.” A projection popped up with medicines and prices. Way more digits there than Yondu figured he was worth. “But there is no cure. The condition is terminal. Palliative care is recommended.”

Oh.

Well. 

That was the nice thing about the medibots, at least. They didn’t bullshit you.

The holographic projection was in real-time. Freaky thing. He’d never much thought about how he looked on the inside. The purple crud looked about ready to spread to an organ connecting to his carrier pouch from the inside. Why the hell did _that_ make him wistful? 

Yondu watched his heart beat, watched himself breathe, right lung mashing against some of the purple mass. He shivered, like he could feel the stuff growing in his guts, compressing his lungs, crushing his stomach. It was hard to breathe all of a sudden. Damn room had no proper air circulation. 

“How much time I got?”

The medibot whirred gently. “The typical survival rate following this level of progression is 30% over three months, 5% over a year.”

Yondu blinked. Took him a while to parse that, but he wasn’t an idiot with math and things were pretty clear once he did. He was going to croak within the year. Probably long before then. 

Death wasn’t a stranger to Ravagers. Flark, if anything Yondu was surprised he’d lived this long, given everything that had come. His parents could have drowned him instead of selling him. Every blade and lash from the Kree and bout of raging sepsis could have ended his tenure as a battle slave, but they didn’t. Stakar would have been within his rights to execute him, but he didn’t. 

Living the high and dangerous life as a mercenary and pirate, well, suffice it to say most Ravagers didn’t come up with a retirement plan. Especially captains. He owed more to Kraglin watching his back than he realized, if he’d had the opportunity to get this old and creaky. 

Hell. It had taken him years to sleep properly again, convinced at long last that Ego wasn’t going to pop up and crush the ship and rip Peter away from him. The jackass hadn’t. Time and again, Yondu escaped death. 

Peter. 

_Fuck._

He was going to have to… make plans. Someone was going to have to captain the Eclector once he was gone. Kraglin? Kraglin had a sharp mind when you put the man in a crisis but handling the ship? Would the perfect first mate make a perfect captain? Funny how they’d never discussed it before. 

And Peter. He ought to tell Peter. Maybe. The kid knew Ravager life, as much as he assumed his own ass was invincible. Kraglin could send him a message after it happened. Just like if Yondu had died from a blaster to the head. No need to make time and worry the kid.

Except now he had time. Not a lot of it, but damn. Death was a hell of a lot easier to deal with when it snuck up on you in the middle of a raid. 

A sharp _blip-blip-blip_ made Yondu jump. The medibot was powering down, vacant eyes fading to the same artificially soothing green as the rest of its face. 

Right. The courtesans did the same thing, after fifteen minutes of inactivity. Assume the user’s gone, wipe their memory drive, power down. The projection of Yondu’s innards blinked out of existence, and Yondu felt a smidge better. It was a lot easier now to pretend this wasn’t happening. Breathing felt easier, too. 

Nothing left for him to do here. Kraglin was outside, probably. Still waiting. Better not keep the idiot waiting. 

Yondu grabbed his clothes from the cubby-space reserved for patients to disrobe, shaking them as though it would dislodge any exotic germs scurrying in the folds of the fabric. Might as well not catch a bad bout of space dysentery on top of everything else. 

Kraglin, predictably, stood outside the clinic with a fine layer of snow on his shoulders testifying to how long he’d waited there. Arms crossed, spine against the brick, kicking up snow and smoothing it down again with the tip of his boot. He almost tripped over his own legs to straighten up when the door creaked open. 

“So? Cap’n?” Kraglin was alone, which was good. Yondu was too tired to keep up a front for any other crew. But… Kraglin was alone, which was not good. Meant the man might want to talk and be worried. “All fixed up?” 

Kraglin could play the tough first mate. But here, stripped of pretenses and away from eyes that would chew him up if he made that concerned face anywhere else? Blasted idiot looked downright sweet. Worried. He sure did wear his heart on his sleeve, even though he’d spent years patching together an allegorical jacket to cover it up.

Must be nice. Must be downright painful, when your captain and sometimes bedmate didn’t have it in him anymore to answer in kind. 

He shoved Kraglin out of his way, a little gentler than necessary. Maybe that was his concession. “All fixed up. Just a lil’ parasite.” 

And damn it, Kraglin had to act all visibly relieved, smiling like a dipshit with a spring in his step. An image came to Yondu’s mind, unbidden, of Kraglin having to make that call to Peter. _Cap’n gone, Petey. Sorry, kid. Yeah, he’d been in bad shape for a while… _

A while of what, lying flat in bed, shriveling away like an orloni carcass? His mind supplied a grotesque image of himself sunken in pillows, stinking of old piss and rot, fat and muscle gone and skin dangling from his bones like blue rags. Was that a way to go? 

With Kraglin at his side, spoon-feeding him water and wiping his ass until he finally died? 

Frack, the idiot would probably do it, too. Loyal to a fuckin’ fault. 

“Why don’t we go’n celebrate?” Kraglin was practically bouncing as they walked. Lucky for him he hadn’t tried to hold hands or sneak a kiss or any other risky behavior. “I got us a room at the Lotus, nice one too, ‘n--”

“Great. Now go find someone to use it with.”

There it was again. The hurt that took a few seconds too long to dissipate, to make way for a carefully schooled, neutral expression. “Uh… y’sure, Cap’n? I just thought, it’s been a while since we…”

Yeah, it had been a while since they’d last fucked. Yondu wished on some level that he could blame it all on Peter leaving, stress and whatnot making him distracted and exhausted and in too much pain for anything. And he was worried sick about Peter; he hadn’t spent thirty damn years of his life raising the idiot just to have him blow his own ass up somewhere. 

If it was difficult to think about fucking before, it was damn near impossible now. 

“I’m gettin’ my own room.” Yondu walked quick, trying to get ahead of Kraglin, which was a hell of a task considering a whole half of Kraglin was nothing but gangly legs, and the cold damp of Contraxia made Yondu’s ankle click with every step. “I’ll see you on the ship.”

He walked ahead without taking in what were probably Kraglin’s big sad eyes, wondering what he’d done wrong this time. Stars, he deserved better than Yondu. 

He lost track of Kraglin for the next hour. Yondu got his own room at the Iron Lotus. And his own courtesans. He’d already blown an extravagant amount of units on the clinic, a few more wouldn’t matter. A man did strange things when he was dying. 

Wasted units, though. He would have gotten more use out of the room if he’d taken a nap in the bed. If he couldn’t get in the damn mood and get it up with Kraglin right now, some synthaskin bots weren’t going to do it either. 

He gave it a token effort, and when he moved a little too fast to bend over and pull off his boots, his back and belly cramped up from deep inside and that was the end of that. He had to stop and catch his damn breath before getting his clothes back on. Kraglin would have tried to help him, he knew it. Kraglin, who was probably outside with the crew now, drinking his cares away. The sounds of his crew felt tinny, distant, disconnected. 

Things were only about to get worse from here. 

The yaka arrow hung in its holster, impotently draped over a stained settee. How many skulls and hearts and exoskeletons had that thing pierced? Too many to track. He’d never bothered counting his kills. Never wondered how it felt to those who deserved a foot and a half of yaka whistled through their worthless hides. 

He wondered now. 

It would be quick. One whistle, right through the brain stem. Painless. The arrow would have enough momentum to finish the job, even if he got cut off mid-whistle. It’d end up stuck in the wall, a dainty little splash of blue on its tip. Kraglin would find him, no doubt, worrying himself sick after his cap’n failed to show up on the ship in a few hours. 

Would the idiot figure it was all an accident, that Yondu meant to whistle though a rowdy intruder and somehow nailed himself instead? Maybe the room wasn’t the best place for this. He could go off on Contraxia, walk until the city collapsed into the snow behind him, whistle, and be done with it all. They’d never find him. Let the legends grow. He'd live on a bit, that way. 

A soft _blip_ from the bed interrupted Yondu’s thoughts of hiding under a distant horizon. Of course. The artificial girl on the bed switched off, sapping just a little bit of the life from the room. 

Courtesans powered down and wiped their memories after fifteen minutes of inactivity. Just like the medibots, forgetting Yondu was ever there. 

Give it a few months, and the entire universe would forget Yondu Udonta had ever graced it.


	2. You're on your own and your back's against the wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yondu continues to have a bad day, and Kraglin just wants to help. It doesn't go well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Movie-wise, this takes place after Contraxia and before Berhert.
> 
> Mild trigger warning for vomit.

Horuz once said, jokingly but only half so, that a man’s greatest motivation to avoid drinking himself into a stupor was to avoid drowning in your own puke, head-first in the toilet and ass in the air for everyone to gawk at. Ravager wisdom at its finest. 

Horuz was dead now. He’d had a point though. Enough of one that Yondu would chuckle about it whenever he got drunk. It got less funny after Horuz died. No, the man didn’t go out drowning in the toilet, but still. That was his legacy. A career as a Ravager who gave lip to his captain, and wisdom couched in dumbass jokes. 

Yondu’s spine creaked and snapped as he uncurled himself, breathing hard through the sour taste of vomit coating his tongue and teeth. He hadn’t gotten proper drunk in ages, but this time bomb in his guts was making sure he wasn’t missing any of the fun. 

His own damn fault though, for thinking food was something he oughta consider trying once in a while. All he’d done was waste a ration bar. 

He stared at the sink and not at the mirror as he washed up, spitting leftover bile and replacing the cold sweat on the back of his neck with tepid water. He knew what he’d find if he looked in the mirror and he could do without staring into his own tired eyes and greyed-out skin. 

He’d never had much love for mirrors. He might be pretty as an angel, but that didn’t mean he liked what he saw in his reflection. 

Funniest damn thing: Yondu spent the first third of his life thinking he was a Kree. 

Was it such a stretch, when his slavers never bothered to tell him which planet they’d bought him from? He'd been taken too young to remember a time before the Kree and their abuse, too young to remember family or a home planet. It wasn’t dumb for him to think he was of the same blood as the other blue-skinned people who pumped him full of soldier pills and gave him his orders. It was just part of being Kree, he assumed. 

He’d felt like a complete dumbass when the medic on Stakar’s crew brightly announced he was a Centaurian. Might as well have told him he was a flarkin’ A’askavarian, for all it meant to him. 

After he’d come down from the soldier drugs, and the fever from his first round of inoculations cleared up, Martinex had sat him down, taught him to use the ship’s computers, and showed him where he could find out more about Centaurians. He still didn’t feel any connection to the grainy pictures he found in the database, of the blue-skinned people with their intact crests. Didn’t matter much either way. He was used to scowling at blue faces no matter where they came from. 

He wondered how long it would take before this… _stuff_ crushing the life out of his organs became obvious on the outside. If eating was a chore, it wouldn’t be long. Lucky he had enough meat on his bones to last him a bit. He knew he’d spent time all gaunt and starved in the slave pens, but there hadn’t been any mirrors there for him to worry how he’d looked. He’d had more important things to worry about than his appearance during those days. He’d been a survivor, then.

Then again, everyone was a survivor until they weren’t. 

“Cap’n?”

“Flark!” Yondu jumped, and his stomach threatened to do the same. He hadn’t heard the door opening, or the stomp of boots, or any sign of life in his quarters until Kraglin peeked in through the open door of the head. Sure, _now_ Kraglin was quiet. The idiot could make more of a racket tripping over a pair of socks than anyone Yondu knew. “The hell you doing? Sneaking in here?”

Kraglin was the only one who had permission to enter any time he wanted. Peter hadn’t that had privilege, but claimed it anyway, and the fact that Yondu had never whistled him through for that was a sticking point between him and Kraglin. 

Stars-damned first mate was on the verge of getting locked out for good, if he ever pulled that trick again. “Give a man a damn heart attack…”

“Sorry, Cap’n. Weren’t sure if you were sleeping or not.” He looked contrite, enough that Yondu was willing to drop it the moment his heart stopped battering his sternum. He was at least grateful for Kraglin’s timing. Five minutes earlier and Yondu would have wasted precious energy coming up with an excuse as to why he was puking up a ration bar. 

“Well, what is it? We ain’t at Berhert yet.”

It was easy to lose track of time on a ship but Yondu was meticulous about that. It helped that he hadn’t bothered sleeping since Contraxia. He had thoughts to work through. 

Not the least of which… well, Peter. Like it or not, he was going to see the boy again in a few hours. He hadn’t thought too far ahead about what would happen after they caught up to him and his little friends on Berhert. Million unit bounty from the Sovereign or not, he was going to need to decide if he and Peter were going to… talk.

Hard to think about plans with Kraglin standing there, as awkwardly as a man could, shuffling with a covered container. He held it out like a peace offering. “Didn’t see you eating with the bridge crew. Figured… well, I haven’t seen you eat much lately, is all. Figured you could use a proper meal.”

Nothing about the ship’s food was proper by any means. Yondu could smell the food, one of the catch-all stews made from the dried meats they kept in stores, made palatable after soaking with watery broth for a while. It smelled fine. Almost good. He would have slurped it down gratefully, if he trusted his stomach to cooperate. 

Kraglin earned himself a sour look for his troubles. “Doesn’t mean I don’t eat. I ain’t with you every damn second of every day.”

“I know, Cap’n.”

“You eat it,” Yondu grumbled. There was no fire to it though, nor to his movements when he pushed past Kraglin, stomping through to the room and searching for a shirt. He caught movement in the reflection of the window, saw Kraglin put the stew container down and cross his gangly arms like he didn’t know what else to do with them. Which probably meant he was thinking hard about what to say next. Yondu stared at him, mostly to avoid catching his own face in the expanse of the window, backlit with stars. 

“You said you got all fixed up on Contraxia?”

He couldn’t tell what Kraglin was playing at and he just wanted the guy to stop worrying already. It didn’t help his case when he bent over to investigate the freshness of a shirt, sucking air in through his teeth as something in the general area of his kidneys ached sharply. Kraglin saw. 

Yondu played it off as a sore back, stretching as though working out a kink. “It was a couple of hours ago. Let a man rest.”

“But you got medicine, right?”

Yondu had lied a million times for a million reasons. For money, for shiny stuff, for his life, for shits and giggles. He almost stumbled this time. “Yeah. Yeah, I got medicine. Just gotta let it work. I’m feeling better already.”

Kraglin smiled, actually _smiled_ with relief. His arms dropped in a way that was all happiness and when he crossed the room, Yondu realized he hadn’t found a shirt yet. He didn’t like that goofily happy look in Kraglin’s eyes. If the man actually tried kissing him…

“Let me do something for you. Okay, Cap’n?”

Not a kiss, small miracles. He took Yondu by the shoulders and led him to the bed. Yondu was too tired to resist and sat down heavily, but found it in him to twist away when Kraglin tried to nudge him to lie down. “I ain’t in the mood for…”

“S’okay, sir. Not looking for that.”

Kraglin’s fingers were bony to the point of sharpness when he pressed them down on either side of Yondu’s spine on his lower back, struggling to find give against muscles that hadn’t relaxed in ages. The man wasn’t exactly an expert at this, but he could still work out the occasional knot, so Yondu let him have his moment, too worried for the massage to do much good. He wanted to squirm away on instinct, in case there was something in his skin that would give away his condition. 

If there was, Kraglin didn’t say anything, prodding at him in little circles. He was as awkward at doling out care as Yondu was at receiving it, but he was trying, and Yondu didn’t like to let _guilt_ creep hotly into his core, but there it was. 

“All right, that’s enough,” Yondu muttered after several minutes, sharply angling away and missing Kraglin’s hands on his skin the minute he did so. He made a show of getting up and checking the chronometer on the wall. “Don’t you got a bridge to watch? We got two jumps to Berhert soon.”

And he didn’t want Kraglin here when they went through the jumps, just in case. 

In case he got dizzy or sick while Kraglin was watching, in case Kraglin decided to be all caring about it and prop up his legs and get him a cold cloth and all that tender bullshit that some deep, dark part of Yondu actually craved. 

Kraglin wasn’t saying anything. Kraglin sat on the bed, gears turning in his head until Yondu could practically smell the smoke. 

One of the great things about Kraglin is he knew not to ask questions. If he waited long enough, Yondu might let something slip. But he never asked. He was itching now.

He was simultaneously guilty and jealous of Kraglin, who got to sit there without worrying about his belly burning up with pain or about pissing blood every damn morning. The idiot got to eat without being scared of upchucking it all an hour later. Yondu almost wanted to tell him the truth, to make him suffer a bit, and just as soon as the thought coalesced, the guilt stamped it all down.

Guilt. It was hot and bitter in his chest. He’d been feeling way too much of that lately. Not a fan.

“It ain’t right,” Kraglin huffed. He spoke so suddenly that Yondu almost jumped again. “You’ve changed cause of him.”

“The fuck are you even talking about?” 

“Peter.” Kraglin used to get along… well not _fine_, but _okay enough_ with Peter. He spat the name out now like a bad drink. “You miss him, fine. But why you lettin’ him get under your skin like that? I know you’re not eatin’ and you ain’t sleeping right and you barely let me touch you without a fight. You’re all mopey ‘cause he left. Is he worth it?”

This whole thing wasn’t about Peter, not really, but it was a convenient focus for his anger. And if it got Kraglin off his back, if it got him nice and far away while Yondu started to waste away…

“The _hell_ do you know?” Yondu slammed his hand down on the nearest surface, almost upsetting the container of rehydrated stew. “The hell do you know about anything? You think you know me, Obfonteri? You think just ‘cause I let you stick it to me once in a while, you know me?”

Kraglin, at his full height, towered a good six inches above Yondu. He could be physically intimidating, when he wanted to be. He stayed right there sitting on the bed, trying to coax out answers with sentiment instead of threats. 

“I know you ‘cause I been by your side for damn near thirty years, sir. I know things you never even told Stakar, don’t I? I know enough to know when something’s not right.”

“Ain’t no business of yours.” 

He wasn’t wrong though. Late at night, after a round or two of sex and in the darkness, their world narrowed to a tiny point where secrets were few, a sanctuary where Yondu told Kraglin things about his past, where Kraglin could hold him through it and offer comfort and Yondu convinced himself it wasn’t love that made them cling to each other like that in the cover of darkness. 

They’d talked and shared about scars both within and without, and if one or both ended up with raw emotions and a damp pillowcase, it wasn’t meant to be dragged into the light of day.

“S’my business when my… my Cap’n’s got something up his ass and he ain’t telling me.” A pause. Yondu heard the bob of Kraglin’s throat. Pretended not to catch the way Kraglin skidded over his words and thankfully came out with _Cap’n_ instead of whatever else was on his tongue. “You tired of me, is that it?”

“Idiot.” Yondu rolled his eyes. He didn’t say _no_, as much as he was itching to scream it, as much as his chest hurt with the effort to hold back. 

Kraglin might have caught on, or the waver in his voice might have been due to something else. “If that parasite’s gone away and it ain’t Peter, then what’s going on? Maybe I can help. You don’t know.”

“It’s starting to sound like you’re begging.” He had to turn away, away from Kraglin’s big stupid eyes. They were too open, too… caring. 

“I… know it hurts, sir.” Kraglin, taking a stab in the dark at whatever was making his captain feel so crappy. Yondu’s jaw clenched and popped. “But I wanna help. I’m worried about ya. I mean… a-ain’t I worth it too?”

Kraglin could run a con job just fine, but the guy just wasn’t a great actor. The anger wavered with every word, until Yondu could hear the desperation beneath. 

_Course you are, you skinny idiot. I’d be dead ten times over if it weren’t for you. If my head were screwed on right, I’d probably know how to love ya like you deserve._

Yondu stared at his reflection. The former slave, the exile, the fuckup who torched anything good before he had a chance to enjoy it. He may, at one time, have wondered about the color of his skin, but he never wondered who he was, deep down. A good-for-nothing asshole. 

Like the purple crap coiling around his guts in the medibot’s projection, poison dragging down anything good and pure. 

Peter. Kraglin. Stakar, even. He knew the feeling even if he couldn’t stomach the word. _Love._ He loved them all so much it hurt. 

“Nah. Ya ain’t.” 

He heard a noise that skirted dangerously close to a sob. Maybe a sniffle. Hopefully, a gasp of rage. The bed whumped as Kraglin hurled himself off it, and for a moment Yondu tensed, wondered if Kraglin would choose confrontation, or escape. 

The door to his quarters banged open, and then slammed shut, hard enough to rattle a porcelain tapir off a nearby shelf. 

Escape, then. 

Yondu was alone. He stared at his reflection, mottled through with the stars beyond the glass. Ain’t no survivor staring back at him now. Just a tired, tired man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _All of you reading, commenting, following... you're amazing. <3_


	3. May the angels bring their flame to you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-mutiny, Yondu bonds with a furry professional asshole who cares more than he lets on. Sounds familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Movie-wise, this takes place after the mutiny, woven in with all the bits in which Yondu and Rocket discuss Feelings™ while in the jail cell. 
> 
> Trigger warning for vomit. Apparently I can't give this guy a break.

Yondu’s first thought, while his head and ribs still rattled numbly from Taserface’s blows, was that Kraglin had a point. 

His second thought was, _Maybe this ain’t so bad after all._

The Kree had a long memory. Yondu knew what they did to escaped slaves, not even mentioning the bounties he’d amassed over the years like trophies. He was too old and too scarred to be much use as any kind of slave. Executed by the Kree was a damn better epitaph than dying in bed like a sick old man. 

He owed that daughter of Thanos some thanks. Only thing she could have done different was aim a little lower. He’d been knocked in the implant a lot over the years, even thwacking it himself on low-hanging doorways here and there, but no one had ever taken a shot at it and made it. Damn, that fizzy-edged headache was a killer. Every piece of circuitry hard-wired to his skull pulsed with queasy pain. 

Good distraction from the rest of his aches and pains, though. 

So was the stink of the floor beneath his slack face. One or two of his last remaining pain-free brain cells remarked that the Eclector’s brig floor wasn’t nearly as dusty as he’d expected, though it stank of old boots and ripe flesh and Stars know what other sort of long-dried, once-organic matter. He’d be in a much bigger hurry to peel his face from the floor if he wasn’t worried about picking up some charming little infection. 

He’d be dead in the morning, after all. Dead, and the disease in his guts dead with it. No need for explanations or conversations. All for the best. Yep, Kraglin had done him one hell of a favour, and all he’d had to do was tell the guy to go fuck himself. He couldn’t be happier. 

Why was it so damn hard to get off the floor, though?

Motivation came in the form of the galaxy’s most dramatic sigh somewhere to his right, and two sharp little fingers pressing against his neck, wiggling around to find a pulse. Bad enough that little jerk got tossed in here with him, did he have to get all touchy-feely? 

He slapped Rocket’s hand away. The movement was sluggish but eloquent all the same. “Get’off! I look dead to you?” 

Rocket crouched by his side and shrugged. Hard to tell if he was looking sympathetic or bored. “Kinda, yeah. You got a hole in your head.”

“I’m talking, ain’t I?”

“I’m just checking! Some people make weird noises when they die, I don’t know how you work.” 

“Any of them noises sound like ‘Go fuck yours—‘”

“Yeah, you’ll live.”

Rocket seemed to lose interest, padding away and leaving Yondu alone to struggle into a sitting position. Pretty kind of him to allow Yondu the courtesy of not giving a shit, really. 

“So does this sort of thing happen a lot?” Rocket asked, staring at the ceiling like the secret to life itself was etched up there in the filth. “This how Ravager promotions usually work? Shoot a guy in the head, boom you’re in charge of a ship full of assholes?”

“No. Not on my damn ship.” Yondu managed a sitting position and made an executive decision to scoot over to the wall. His stomach was hurting something awful. He couldn’t remember if Taserface had punched him in the guts or not. Probably had, before Yondu’d woken up to a slap in the face, bound to a chair on the bridge. On _his_ bridge, where he’d doled out punishments to rookies and seasoned pirates alike. He’d never been cruel for the sake of it, though. That wasn’t the Ravager way. 

Rocket made a thoughtful noise, giving the brig a quick once-over. The rat looked like a clever bastard. Handy with tech, from what Yondu had seen of him. Maybe the brig was too low-tech for him to make anything of it, and how funny would _that_ be. 

Yondu could pick a lock in his sleep (and he had, once) but there wasn’t much point in escape. Not for him. 

“Well… no offense, but your employees are a bunch of jerks.”

Rocket wasn’t wrong. Damn it, the rat deserved better than this. He wasn’t squeaky clean by any means, but he was out there saving the galaxy with Peter, making himself a good fucking deal more useful than Yondu ever did, and he deserved a better shot at things than getting dragged into Yondu’s mess. 

So there he was, unburdening himself to Rocket. The rat probably didn’t give a single flying fuck, but there was always the chance he’d escape on his own somewhere between now and his delivery to the Sovereign. He looked wily enough. A survivor. 

If Yondu was lucky, maybe Rocket would get drunk one night and laugh his ass off while relaying Yondu’s sad little sob story to Peter, extending his presence in the collective consciousness of the universe for just a little while longer. 

There was only one problem with Peter now.

Ego. 

Fuck, now there was a name he thought he’d never have to hear again. The thought of Ego, of that smarmy face with its million dark hidden secrets, made his guts churn and twist. There was a lot he didn’t know about the man, aside from the fact that he liked to fuck and he liked to kill kids, and that was all Yondu needed to know. 

That, and Ego was a Stars-damned shadow that haunted his steps for decades before Yondu finally decided that Ego had given up on them. He’d thought wrong. 

Now the decades of running had finally caught up to him, and the jackass had Peter. 

This changed everything. 

Later, Yondu could worry about dropping dead. Right now, he needed action. “I think I got an idea on how to get out of here. But we’re going to need your little friend.”

He could swear he saw Rocket’s ear perk up at the thought of freedom. “That’s a pretty big ask. Think those assholes out there are gonna let him go?”

“Get ‘em drunk enough and they’re lucky to remember their pants. You got a way to tell him where you at?”

“Nah, but he always seems to find me anyway.”

Now if that didn’t just feel familiar. If his guts weren’t so damn achy, the pain morphing into some sudden and hellish nausea, Yondu would have grinned at the memory of a tiny, grouchy, chatty Peter following him like a pint-sized shadow all over the ship back in those early days. 

The memories felt so distant now. Fragmented. Fuck. He should have kept logs, a journal, made a will, anything to leave Peter with some record of their life together. He shouldn’t have yelled every time Peter tried to take a picture of him. He should have… 

The ache in his guts morphed into a churn, hot and sharp. He must have been getting pretty flarkin’ soft, if sentimental thoughts were starting to make him nauseated. Yondu slipped a hand under his coat, looking to soothe the sharp pain bubbling from just below his ribs, to his stomach, and back again. He thought back to the projection in the clinic on Contraxia, of the crud compressing his organs, wrapping around his lungs like a vice. 

Rocket had gone back to pacing the brig, investigating the hinges on the bars. Yondu watched him, blinking grit out of his vision and sucking in an unproductive breath, going a little diagonal himself as the floor tipped and ebbed. Whatever was churning in his stomach reached a peak, bringing with it a rising tide of cold sweat. Not this. Not here. 

“Uh, you okay?”

He must have whimpered, maybe breathed a little too harshly, doubled over the arm pressing into his stomach, a bulwark against the pain. Rocket was staring at him like he couldn’t quite figure out the endgame here. 

“What, you doin’ the old sick-prisoner-get-help routine? Think your crew’s dumb enough to fall for it and let us out?”

Oh, they definitely were. Without a fucking _doubt_, they were. But Yondu’s reply was a stuttered groan while he struggled to push breath past whatever was tearing up his guts, rolling onto shaking knees. If he was going to puke, best not to destroy his coat. 

He mashed his face against his grimy sleeve, twisting this way and that, as though he could command his organs into silence. 

“… that’s some pretty bad acting anyway, Blue.” Rocket didn’t sound convinced. “You got old-man medicine stashed in your pockets or something? You gotta tell me before you die of a heart attack or…”

“Bucket,” Yondu rasped, pointing vaguely to the back of the brig. The place didn’t have a washroom—prisoners and insubordinate crew didn’t get fancy trappings—but the numskulls in charge of the brig usually tossed some buckets in there. At least they were supposed to, according to orders. 

Lucky for him, his crew listened once in a while. It was damn nice of Rocket to find him a clean bucket, plonking it down just in time. Yondu coughed and gagged through the exquisite pain of throwing up when there was nothing to throw up except for water and bile. Probably blood, too, but he wasn’t going to crack his eyes open and examine the results. 

He heaved twice more, coming up empty, muscles locking tight under each paroxysm and he _knew_ he’d been feeling sore for hours over this, or until he dropped dead, whichever came first. 

The uncertainty didn’t bother him. He was used to living in the now when his next breath wasn’t promised. But…

But… shit, in his younger days, he figured he’d stop worrying about Peter once the idiot reached adulthood. And sure he was a dumbass, but one who _could_ take care of himself, despite a million attempts by the galaxy to relieve him of life and limb. 

Yondu was worried though. And he was still alive, which meant he wasn’t giving up on getting his idiot boy out of harm’s way. 

A stringy glob of bile and saliva dangled festively from his lip. It took two dry spits to shake it loose, and then Yondu opened his eyes, in time to watch Rocket’s expression shift from worry to fabricated disgust. 

“Well, that’s awesome.” By all means Rocket should have been huddled as far away from the scene as he could, waiting for his little twig kiddo to walk by, but there he was, inching closer. Nice and cautious, in case Yondu got pissed and decided to aim a volley in his direction, but close enough to awkwardly pat him on the back. “Here I was thinking, you know what would be even better than getting boiled alive by a pissed-off gold nugget? Dying of dysentery in a jail cell. That’s the stuff of dreams.”

Yondu chuckled. It came out as a croaky gasp, but it was an attempt. “Y… you ain’t gonna catch what I got. Trust me.”

“If you’re gonna get the runs next, give me some warning so I can climb on something.”

Rocket’s snark was oddly soothing, a counterpoint to Kraglin’s awkward concern, and in many ways it was a lot easier to deal with. 

He missed Kraglin though. He shouldn’t have stabbed the idiot through the heart like that, but at least he got his cap’n back by stabbing him in the back. All’s fair in love and mutiny. 

Yondu pushed the bucket away, getting his breath back bit by bit. “I been dealing with a lil’… medical thing. Won’t have to worry about it much longer.”

“Little, huh.” Rocket’s snort was gentle. At least he’d stopped patting Yondu on the back. 

“Awfully concerned there, aren’t ya?”

“Don’t get any warm fuzzy feelings. If I want to get out of here, I need you alive. And mostly well.”

Yondu chuckled again. It didn’t hurt this time. “Mostly.”

“Yeah, I mean, I guess you’d still be useful with two broken legs or whatever. You can still roll and whistle, right? Shit, can you puke and whistle? That’d be gross, but if it works…”

Yondu rolled his eyes. He’d whistled and fought and killed while in much direr conditions, thank you very much. And he _was_ feeling better now that he’d upchucked whatever was left in his stomach, so there was still hope for everyone yet. “Lucky for you, I’m just peachy.”

Rocket seemed to lose interest in the state of his health, or at least was satisfied that Yondu was going to stay alive long enough to get them out of there. He strolled to the bars, and Yondu heard him snuffle quietly. 

Yondu had time to roll his neck, snapping a few kinks out, noticing for the first time the shift in weight. There wasn’t a lot of heft to the implant, but he’d spent enough decades with that thing in his skull to know its size and weight down to the milligram. Felt weird now. 

“So. Peter’s dad, huh?”

Rocket had circumnavigated the brig, returning to chat. Maybe to make sure Yondu was still alive. 

“Ego,” Yondu said, venom in his tone. “He’s a jackass. He’s not good with kids.”

“He hurt your kids or something?”

“I ain’t got kids.”

“Could have fooled me.” 

Before he could ask what the hell was _that_ supposed to mean, Rocket shrugged airily. “Don’t take it personally. I would have expected a big bad Ravager to leave a trail of brats all over the galaxy. I bet Quill has.”

It was a dig at Peter for sure, but all Yondu could do was agree. Peter turning up with a baby was something he’d ruthlessly tried to prevent. “Nah, I taught him better than that.” He had to ask, though, because they were making conversation, weren’t they? “You got some brats of your own?”

Rocket’s eyes narrowed to two sharp points. “Not funny.”

“Not tryin’ to be. Could have sworn that little twig out there follows you around like you’re his daddy.”

He couldn’t parse the long, slow look Rocket gave him. Probably it looked a lot like the face Yondu had pulled when he thought Rocket was somehow insinuating he was anyone’s dad. Stupid. Yeah. 

Rocket’s reply was guarded. “It’s complicated.”

“Yeah. I guess bein’ a daddy kinda is.”

There was no more to be said on the topic. Rocket’s nostrils flared and his ears twitched and in an instant he’d scampered to the bars. Looks like Twig had managed to find them after all.

Yondu was feeling better than he had in weeks. Revenge was a hell of a motivator. Getting back at his crew, that was going to be good for a palate cleanser. Getting to personally whistle through Ego after relegating it to his deepest fantasies for decades, now _that_ was going to be fun. 

No time to ponder about brats and daddies and all that complicated, soft nonsense. All things considered, Peter was the one good thing he’d ever contributed to this universe, and he’d be damned if some planet-sized jackass was going to take it away. He just had to hang on to this life a little bit longer. 

He could die when Peter was safe, and not a second earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _All of you reading, commenting, following... you're amazing and your comments are love. <3_


End file.
